Career Guidance
by A.A. Pessimal
Summary: You've graduated as an Assassin. You've assisted at an inhumation. You've left school. You can call your former teachers by their first names. But what happens next? Jocasta Wiggs suffers Angst in Ankh-Morpork and goes to a professional for advice.
1. Out of time

Career Guidance….

Jocasta Wiggs sat in the corner of the coffeeshop and looked down into the half-full, lukewarm, coffee cup she was nursing. She sighed, deeply. This wasn't exactly how she'd envisaged her life was going to go after graduating from the Assassins' School. But a half-full cup of lukewarm coffee with all the froth having subsided into a sad white smear on the top, with all the chocolaty drops long ago licked off, seemed to amply sum it up right now.

And it had all been so _certain_ on that long-ago early morning in June, when she'd collected her pink pass slip from the otherwise deadly fingers of Miss Sanderson-Reeves, the Domestic Science mistress known to the pupils as "Mrs Mericet". Fittingly, she had become a full licenced Assassin in the summerhouse at Ramkin Manor, Sir Samuel Vimes having been prevailed upon to provide a terrifyingly realistic scenario as part of their Final Examination. A frequent visitor to Ramkin Manor in the course of her training, Jocasta had successfully evaded Watch patrols, werewolves and other hazards, (such as the proximity of Fred Colon's feet), and earned her licence by successfully evading capture.

She'd suddenly ceased to be a schoolpupil. She was eighteen. A legally recognised adult. Her old teachers had shaken her by the hand, some had even hugged and kissed her, and as confirmation of her adult and Full Assassin status, some had even invited her to be on first name terms with them. Gods knew, that summer she'd even lost her virginity. Her adult life had stretched in front of her.

And today it still stretched. She now knew the full, hideous, meaning of the word "anticlimax". It was how you felt after spending seven formative years training for one single life-or-death event. Having passed through the terror and the exhilaration of the final Run, having then had a brief and passionate summer affair with a much older person (her body still sung with exultation), and having even been invited to assist at an Inhumation by an older and more experienced licenced Assassin, how on earth did you follow that?

Ankh-Morpork felt forlorn and empty, somehow. The people she'd started school with, nearly…eight years ago, now, just seemed to have melted away as if they'd never been. She hadn't realised what a support system they'd been, until they weren't there any more.

She shifted moodily in her seat. She was aware of the coffeshop patron observing her with veiled concern. She could see his point - a moody Assassin was bad for business. She reassured him with a smile. No, it was like.. a theatre set. Like that two-dimensional model of Ankh-Morpork that Dibbler had ordered built for some entertainment or other. He'd ended up setting fire to it, hadn't he? Silly man. He had the reverse of the Creosote touch, Dibbler: everything he touched ultimately became lead.

A theatre set where... all the actors and actresses are - were - your friends from school. But the play's finished and the set's still standing. There's a new cast auditioning for the roles, and the cast you were a part of are all over the Disc by now. Millie's at the Academy in Sto Lat, learning to be an Army officer. Diabola's back in Toledo. Even the insufferable Lucinda Rust, from what I hear, the one we thought was dead, she's fighting her way up through Klatch right now. She gets her Licence if she makes it home by a certain date and reports in to Miss Smith-Rhodes. _And pig and pain though she was, if she walked in here now I'd kiss her and buy her a coffee, just because I've known her for seven years. _

No, without the old crew, it felt cold and barren and empty, even though the city still teemed with life and some of the faces were familiar to her, the ones she most wanted to be among were gone.

As if responding to her mood, a group of older Assassins' School pupils walked in, a mixed set of boys and girls of sixteen and seventeen.

Nineteen year old Jocasta Wiggs sighed, finished her coffee, nodded at the laughing pupils, paid up, and walked out. Her own fault for picking the fashionable Tarbucks, where she - they'd - loved coming as students... never mind, there was always _**Café Necros(1)**_, the smart coffee shop that had recently opened up with the express intention of catering to Assassins. That is, people with style who could be counted on to spend well and tip lavishly.

And Jocasta wasn't short of cash, not after taking her agreed cut of the contract fee for the Brindisi Job. Alice Band had been more than generous there, and her old teacher had paid her the compliment of saying she'd rather have had Jocasta alongside her than many others from her year. And now you know you could do it for real if you had to, yes?

Trying not to show uncertainty, Jocasta had murmured "Yes, Miss Band" for the last time, aware that her teacher had shown her one final lesson - that while Alice had dealt the inhumation blow, she, Jocasta, could at least assist and be present at an annulment without revulsion or fear or undue pity. Besides, the client had been an all-time bastard, and an outstanding candidate for what Alice and the new generation of female teachers described as _"ethical assassination" - _leave the world that little bit cleaner than when you found it. And then there had been all the other things she'd learnt from Alice over the summer... those long days on the archaeology dig, and the nights.... those _nights..._

Jocasta sighed at a pleasant memory, but stepped out into the street fully aware that this was Ankh-Morpork, where a moment's inattention could be fatal. She remembered the name a sympathetic Johanna Smith-Rhodes had given her. _Cheap Street. _she thought_. From here__**(3)**__, through Cheapside, and halfway down Welcome Soap. Cut down the lane to Phelan's Well, and you're there. Miss Smith-Rhodes says he's the best at his job. _

Jocasta strode on, vaguely aware that somebody wearing Assassin black is at least spared some of the most obvious forms of harrasment on Ankh-Morpork's city streets.

"Excuse me. miss. Are you trying to find yourself?"

Jocasta couldn't honestly say "no" to that, but she was damned if she meant it the same way as the two Omnian missionaries who had stopped her in the street, their suits neat and tidy, their hair slicked down, their badges neatly engraved to show white names against black. She wished she didn't project this air of _uncertainty _all the time; she'd been told she went through life with a permanantly _anxious_ expression on her face, as if she was expecting to be tapped over the shoulder at any second by somebody who was bound to advise her she was doing it wrong. She knew this made her a magnet for religious monomaniacs. And not for the first time, she wished she could scowl like Miss Smith-Rhodes. She wished she could produce the same sort of knicker-wetting disapproving glare that Miss Band could manifest from the front of the classroom. She bet neither of _them _were troubled with missionaries.

"Yes I do want guidance!" she shouted, aware it was possibly the most wrong thing to say, as various religious texts were opened and triumphantly displayed in front of her eyes, with fingertips freely used to emphasise the most relevant passages. Jocasta stomped on in a cloud of competing missionaries, all aware they had hooked a potential convert and unwilling to let go. "But I'm not sure I need _your_ kind of guidance yet, thank you very much. That's why I'm not stopping .Look, you silly man, I don't want to be rude, but the kind of guidance I need is a bit more _**earthly**_ than that... will you kindly get out of the way?"

And then she was there. She took a moment to take in the highly optimistic adverts in the window offering exciting-sounding work at improbably high hourly rates. (4)

She took a deep breath, knowing that Miss Band would have effortlessly dispersed hopeful missionaries in a tenth of the time. Miss Smith-Rhodes might have threatened to bring them closer to their God than they'd anticipated when they woke up this morning. _Why me? _she thought, sighing._ Because you were blessed with a wide-open friendly face, idiot! _she told herself.

She had seen the discreet shop front, headed by the board announcing "Liona Keeble – Job Broker" from the other side of Phelan's Well. The interior of the shop was what would otherwise have been a wide space, with its walls lined by races of advertised jobs and the central open space containing free-standing racks that announced more occupational vacancies available. A group, fairly typical Morporkian people, browsing the racks headed _DOMESTIC SERVICE _half turned to look at her as they came in, possibly in surprise that an Assassin was looking for a regular job. Jocasta smiled wanly at them, and they turned away.

She walked through the boards and the job adverts.

_Trainee under-footmen and downstairs maids needed.. apply at Ramkin Manor (NB – atte rear door) and ask for Mr Willikins. _

_Overlocker operatives required. Good pay. Competitive shifts. Apply H. Catterail (mechanised sewing) Cockbill Street works_**. (7)**

Jocasta approached the counter and smiled at the woman behind it. She flashed a trained receptionist's smile, all glitter but no warmth, back.

"I really wouldn't mind a chat with Mr Keeble, please. As soon as is convenient. Thank you so much!" It was probably the Assassin black that did it: the girl, perhaps a year or so younger than Jocasta, stood up hastily and went to a back office. She returned, and ushered Jocasta into the back of the job shop, where things were quieter.

"Tea or coffee while you're waiting?"

Jocasta accepted another coffee, and gathered her thoughts. _**(8) **_She idly watched out of the window and down Cheap Street, where the evangelists were harassing a couple of clowns and assuring them that it was ungodly in the sight of Om to seek to disguise thy true nature with layers of paint and heathen decoration. A throng of A nkh-Morporkians was forming in the background, sensing street theatre.

One of the clowns had just said "I dunno what you're on about there mate, this _**is**_ my true face!"

"Brother, you are sunk in your unOmliness for so long that you assuredly mistake the false for the real!" The missionary flourished an impregnated wipe of a type used normally only by very dedicated Goths to remove a lot of slap all at once. The crowd went "oooOOOH!"

"Oh, _dear_!" thought Jocasta, as the fight started. You don't try to forcibly remove a clown's makeup in Ankh-Morpork. It's like asking an Assassin to disarm, or a Seamstress not to… seam… some things are mortal insults. Worst, any insult to the seamstresses is normally dealt with by the Agony Aunts. Any comparable insult to clowns summons the Jolly Good Pals, and this near to the Fools' Guild…

She sipped her coffee. She'd heard that on other worlds, the archetype of War was alleged to be female and could walk down a street leaving fights and strife behind her to mark her passage. _**(9) **_Sometimes, she could see a grain of truth in that concept.

Just as a couple of reluctant Watchmen moved in to arrest the fallen and the one or two staggering survivors, the young receptionist returned.

"Mr Keeble will see you now" she said.

Jocasta followed, allowing herself to be led to an office at the rear of the building. The girl knocked and announced_**(10)**_

"Miss Wiggs, Liona",

Then withdrew, closing the door behind her.

Jocasta was aware of one of the longest, thinnest, men she had ever seen, his bony, somewhat manic, face topped by a shock of neatly attended blonde hair.

"Ah, you've come about the PA job at the Thaumatalogical Park, have you, at twenty-five dollars a month? I'm sorry that one's gone" he said, as if reading off an invisible script, "must remember to take it out of the window, ha ha, but I can offer you hospitality work at the university, seventy-five pence a day, plus tips? No?"

"no".

"How about an exciting opportunity as a plateware hygienist and consultant in cutlery sterilisation? Also at the University, paying fifty pence a day, no unsocial hours allowance for working Somnambulistic Nibbles or Earliest Breakfast, but your night trolleybus fare is paid..no?"

"No, mr Keeble. By the way, haven't I seen you at the Blue Cat Club…"

Keeble twitched, maniacally.

"How do _you_ get to go to…"

"Licenced assassin, Mr Keeble. Friend of Alice Band".

Keeble seemingly reconsidered the scene.

"And I really don't want a new job quite that quickly, Mr Keeble. I just need your professional advice on what _else _I can do. And I'm prepared to pay for your time!"

Keeble sighed heavily, and nodded.

"Well, you'd better come in, then".

* * *

_**(1) **_Formerly _**Caffé Nero, **_but this foundered on the legendary hard-headedness, practicality and lack of metaphorical imagination of the average Ankh-Morporkian. Any entrepreneur seeking to set up an upmarket coffee shop in the city would be swamped with observations, to wit:-

i) "_**Caffé Nero? **_What's that the foreign for, then? "Black Coffee?" But _**all **_coffee is black, till you put the milk in. And your point is, exactly? Boring name, innit? Hey, Gladys! you'll never believe this! Bloke's calling his caff "Black Coffee", but putting it in foreign as if it actually means something!"

ii) "A dollar for a cup of coffee just because it's got white froth on the top and little black bits? Harga's House of Ribs will sell you that for fivepence, you robbing bastard!"_**(2)**_

_**(2) **_Although the little black bits floating in the froth on top of the coffee in Harga's tended to be bits of his beard stubble...

_**(3) **_To anyone with the mappe _**The Streets of Ankh-Morpork **_handy, Jocasta is currently standing at the Rimwards end of Filigree Street roughly outside the Teachers' Guild building.

_**(4) **_All employment agencies on Earth have these in the window. They're called "bait". The moment you go in and ask about the PA work at a local radio station paying £9.90 per hour, you will inevitably be told "oh, sorry, that went this morning, must take it out of the window. We do have exciting opportunities in commercial catering as a cutlery and plateware hygienist _**(5)**_, paying a really competitive 5p an hour above the minimum wage… or a really exciting career break in completed industrial goods protection systems assembly,(_**6) **_for ten pence above minimum wage…

_**(5) Dishwasher**_

_**(6) Packer**_

_**(7) **_This card had been ruined by somebody overwriting it with "tight fisted fascist bastard, needs a good kicking, don't work for him" . Mr Catterail and his Works appear in _**Feet of Clay**_ as a location.

_**(8)**_ "For this pupil, gathering her thoughts is an exercise akin to rounding up sheep without benefit of sheepdog. She must learn to focus more!" (Assassins School end-of-term report on the thirteen year old Jocasta Wiggs (Tump House), an observation submitted by Miss Joan Sanderson-Reeves (Domestic Sciences.)

_**(9) **_Refer to _**Good Omens **_where this is, in fact, the truth.

_**(10)**_ In_** Mort, **_Liona Keeble has just opened the city's first employment agency and has had the problem of placing Death in a suitable new career.


	2. Aspirations and aptitudes

**Career Guidance 2**

**For those who asked, the other night I realised exactly who I see when I visualise my picture of Jocasta Wiggs, a girl marked by uncertainty and worry, as if she's afraid at any time somebody's going to tap her on the shoulder and tell her she isn't doing it right. **

**I was re-watching _the Lord of the Rings _part 2 ("The Two Towers"). And suddenly in Edoras there she bloody well was, my ideal Jocasta. Princess Eowyn, or in mundane life Australian actress Miranda Otto. Jocasta Wiggs to the very life, esp. in the swordplay sequence with Aragorn. Clever, deadly, capable of using that sword for what it was meant for... but that look of un certainty about her eyes said "Jocasta". **

**So dedicated to Miranda Ottos everywhere:- **

Liona Keeble sighed and looked reflectively at the Assassin sitting in front of him. This was shaping up to be an interesting day.

He looked over the standard paperwork he'd had the girl fill in to give him some thinking time. Then he looked into her face, that of a pretty, slightly freckled, girl with unruly mousy-brown hair at the roots, which at some point a skilled hairdresser had tried to tint into a rather more interesting shade of brown. Her nose was almost retrousée. Her cheekbones were almost visible. Her eyes were hazel. She wore the stylish black of the Assassins' Guild, with the silver Guild badge visible. But it was the in-between black, the interim black, that straddled the awkward gap between graduating from the Guild school and establishing oneself as a fully-fledged Licenced Assassin. It still had aspects of the familiar and reassuring senior school uniform about it, especially in the cut of that long formal ankle-length skirt, and the comfortable boots that had long since been broken in and had carried their wearer since the age of fifteen. . But the school tie might have been left off, and the formal school blouse replaced by more adult items of dress, such as bustier, bustle and tight-buttoned bodice, all of course in the ubiquitous black satin and silk that was the prerogative of the female Assassin.

And for such a long time, of course, there had been virtually no female Assassins. Lady T'Malia had been the first, of course, and there were dark rumours still about Lady de Meserole, the Patrician's aunt and political confidante. Then the Guild had announced its intention to go co-educational (the smart money backed Vetinari and Lady de Meserole having somehow forced this change on the Guild School) so suitable female staff had to be engaged to meet the influx of new pupils and perform those… _gender-defined_… teaching and pastoral tasks which only a female teacher could perform. This had brought four female teachers, (of whom it was universally agreed that they had the appropriate degree of vocational qualification), to the Guild, all of whom had passed through a tough but necessarily truncated version of the Assassin's training course. And it had been agreed that these four, plus another four lady teachers recruited some years later, had set the bar for style and fashion for the female Assassin, offering eight different and distinct role-models for the female pupil to style herself against.

_First one, then perhaps two, then four. Then eight. And after last summer's final Exam, add another ninety-plus. Today, we have a hundred licenced female Assassins in and around this city, maybe spread out all over the Disc between here and Howondaland. So it's hardly surprising one might be having issues about vocation and career and might want a change. _

As one who was temperamentally inclined to appreciate womens' clothing and who could, in fact, talk intelligently about it if a close girlfriend invited him on a shopping expedition, Liona Keeble appraised Jocasta Wiggs and speculated on her particular burgeoning Assassin's chic.

_From the way she's dressed, she wants to be Alice Band, _he thought. _That apparently tight pencil-skirt, but with the side-panels that are loosely tacked together and offer a lot more leg-room if it's needed in a hurry. One good kick, say ending up on the point of an attacker's jaw, tears out the stitches, and all of a sudden she's got full mobility in a fight. The button-down boots are standard, as is the bodice buttoning to the neck. It's the Quirmian one who favours low-cut décolletage. Partly advertising, partly to distract from what her hands are doing. _

_But this one tends towards the dumpy, poor girl. Alice Band must have a good couple of inches over her. Give her twenty years, her role-model among the staff is going to be Davinia Bellamy the killer florist. Ah well, she's got it, for now… _

"You're only just nineteen." he began, carefully. "Ordinarily I'd say that nineteen is a bit too young to be having vocational issues, but I see from your resume that you've gone into the family business, so to speak."

* * *

Father had been swollen with pride on the morning she'd graduated as a full Assassin. Her older brothers had passed on messages perporting to be stunned at the sudden and calamitous dumbing-down of education standards at the Guild school that had allowed their sister to join them as a licenced assassin, but then, they were brothers. They had to be disparaging. It was mandatory in these circumstances.

From an age when she had been old enough to think and care about these things, she'd calmly accepted that she was going to be sent to the Quirm Academy for Young Ladies, which had been _alma mater_ to her mother and older sister. Indeed, her mother had been full of jolly stories about the time when she and Bunty Mousefather and Sybil Ramkin had done this or that or the other… Jocasta had even attended a prep school in Ankh-Morpork that specialised in _preparing_ young girls for entrance to QAYL and jolly well shaping them up to what would be required of them from age eleven onwards.

And then she'd come back from prep school one day, aged ten, to find her father reading a circular from the Guild and remarking "well, well, well!" to himself while Mother sat with her face composed in a long hard line and her lips invisible.

She was used to having Daddy at home a lot: she didn't quite know what he did that took him off for short periods every now and again, but apparently it was very well paid work that meant he could spend the maximum time at home with his family. But his black cloak and hat were hanging on the peg in the hall, and after every business trip abroad there'd be a little gift from Brindisi, or Toledo, or Genua or Überwald. Daddy never forgot his youngest daughter: she had a shelf full of costume dolls from other countries that he'd brought back with him.

"Jocasta, dear." Daddy had said, "In a year or so you'll be old enough to go to big school."

Mother's expression would have shattered granite.

"How do you feel about going to the Assassins' Guild School, where your brothers go? They're taking in girls as from next autumn term!"

Sensing this would be a damn sight more interesting than those soppy old women who ran QAYL, Jocasta had said " Yes _**please**_, Daddy!" very loud and very quickly. She suspected the sort of things the AG taught its pupils and had overheard her older brothers talking. And some of that sort of stuff frankly worried her. But she knew she'd regret it for the rest of her life if she didn't grab the chance with both hands and her teeth.

And so she was enrolled. Despite a home address in Ankh-Morpork, she was allowed to board: her mother, surprisingly, said "It'll be the making of you. Boarding is the foundation of independence!" This led to a long draughty attic, which the girls suspected had previously been the abode of rats, mice and other vermin. (In fact, it had housed the boys of Viper House up until two years previously). As the Guild was hopelessly behind on building work to accommodate new pupils, old condemned dorms had to be brought back into play to house a nearly 100% increase in student numbers.

Thirty appalled-looking eleven year old girls and their essential luggage had sat in the midst of dust, cobwebs, stacked sleeping mattresses, bundled bedding, and general neglect. Their teacher Miss Band, who had stressed she was as new to the School as they were, had gone to look for somebody to complain to.

Then the dark-haired confident looking one had stood up and said

"OK, people, The way I see it there are two ways this can go. We can sit here and cry or we can do something about it. I vote we do something about it."

_That's exactly what I'd have said if I'd had the confidence! _Jocasta marvelled. She raised a hand, diffidently. The dark-haired girl nodded at her.

"Er…I'm almost positive I saw a few broom cupboards and things on the way up. It won't hurt to go and look."

Dark-hair grinned. "you, you and you. Go with.. Jocasta, wasn't it?" Jocasta wasn't surprised that the three girls tamely followed her, as they opened cupboard doors and borrowed brooms, dustpans and brushes. They brought enough back for eight people. The dark-haired girl, whose name she discovered was Millie, set eight girls to sweeping and the rest to follow in their wake laying down sleeping rolls and distributing pillows, blankets and sheets. There was one - there would always be one – who at first petulantly refused to touch a broom, on the grounds there ought to be _servants_ doing that sort of thing. After a brief altercation with Millie, however, she very reluctantly conceded the point that regrettably, there are times when even a Rust needs to know how to push a broom and sweep up dust.

Miss Band returned to a clean and quietly organised dorm where thirty bedrolls had been laid out on an otherwise clean-swept floor and made up into beds. With no wardrobes or cabinets to unpack into the girls were living out of their travelling trunks, and study desks were conspicuous by their absence. But they'd tried: a little slippall had eased the catches and hinges on long-rusted skylight windows, and several were open to allow for circulation of air. Millie and Jocasta and a third girl called Hazel were supervising hanging up oil- lamps for the evening.

"I thought they were living in squalor, Miss Band?" said an amusedly modulated male voice.

"An hour ago, Master, this attic was a disgusting squalid pit!"

"Indeed. Perhaps the pupils may enlighten us?" His eyes scanned a few trunks and read the painted-on names.

"Miss… Emilia Mountjoy-Standfast?" he hazarded.

"Sir, I am here!" said Millie, echoing the formal use of words employed in the Final Run. Lord Downey did not miss the reference, and laughed appreciatively.

"The cadet sister of the Mountjoy-Standfast brothers. Clive of Five Ragineaus, who remains Mountjoy-Standish Major. And of Bertram, who now ceases to be Mountjoy-Standish Minor, but is advanced to Medial" he remarked.

Adding "Also _dangerously _close to over-confident after even only half a day here, but I'm _sure _Miss Band will take note of that and act appropriately."

He looked at Jocasta.

"And in addition to the new Mountjoy-Standfast Minor, I see we also have the new Wiggs Minor, her brother Denis having moved up to Wiggs Medial. Also engaged in masking her living space clean, liveable and tidy, I am pleased to see. Miss Band, perhaps a gold star each for these sterling young ladies, who didn't complain but who got down to practically improving their lot? As for the rest of you, I must apologise for the rather Ephebian state of the accommodation. There will be an issue of wardrobes and lockers and other furniture for you. I apologise for its delay, but it will be here at the earliest possible moment. This will of course include, er, _beds_ for you all. For now, please do the best you can in the spirit of the Guild. Thank you all!"_**(1) **_

Alice Band gave Jocasta a gold star, but demoted Millie to a silver.

"Oh, _miss_!" Millie protested.

"That's because the Master took a dig at _me_ for _your_ being over-confident!" Alice retorted. "In the fullness of time you will see that I was being lenient. I will have _other_ ideas for punishing over-confidence, when we've all had time to find our feet here. And carry on complaining, Emilia, and I'll demote you still further, to a bronze star!" _**(3)**_

* * *

"And that's how it started" Jocasta said to the job-broker.

Keeble nodded.

"And over the next seven years you performed steadily, but not spectacularly, at your lessons and courses. Apart from being graded significantly better than average at climbing and edificeering, and in wilderness survival, you have no especial strengths as an Assassin. But then, you have no special weaknesses either. With average marks running in the C grade with some B's and no A's, D's or E's, you are what I in my trade would call a _generalist_ – that is, good enough at everything but outstanding at nothing."

Jocasta nodded, knowing this to be fair appraisal.

"And you are a licenced assassin."

Keeble sat back, uncomfortably, in his seat.

"May I ask. Have you ever? In the course of duty? Er?"

Jocasta smiled at him, understanding his deference.

"I assisted in an "er.". Last summer. Yes. And this is part of the problem."

* * *

The summer after graduating, Jocasta's first week or so had been spent in the usual round of balls and parties and receptions for newly-minted Assassins. The traditional coming-out night at the Palace, for instance, with Vetinari himself shaking hands with the new crop and giving the feeling that he was memorising every face, every name, for future reference. As one of the first large-scale harvest of female Guild graduates, Jocasta, itching and sweating slightly in an unfamiliar ballgown, had lined up with a hundred colleagues for group iconographs, Lady T'malia and Bobbi de Meserole in the centre of the frame, their dream vindicated, the permanent teaching staff next to them, ninety or so graduates grouped around them, and Otto Chriek bullying and chivvying them into position.

Jocasta had noted that during the night, the scholarship students had gradually been filtered away and had all but disappeared: during a quiet moment she raised this with Millie, who said "They're all being offered a job as Dark Clerks, silly. You know? Licenced assassins with no independent income? Might be tempted to do too much too soon just to get financially comfortable? They get offered a salaried job by the State to keep them out of trouble and work for Vetinari. Just as well, really, because if you stop and add it up, forty of the girls who graduated the other night are nationals of other countries! Do you think Heidi and Hans Retief are going to stick around now they've graduated? No way! The moment they get home, they can dictate their own salary working for the Bureau of State Security. Peggy N'kouf's going to be her father's security consultant in Zululand. Take Astrid Heinrici over there. Lady Margalotta wants her own Guild-trained Dark Clerks for Überwald. The way I look at it, any of them could be sent back here by their native countries on a contract. If they know in advance we've got Dark Clerks to track and neutralise them, then that's a deterrent, isn't it? Détente!"

And with the last of the congratulations and the last of the parties out of the way, with the euphoria having ebbed and flattened like old champagne, she had taken up Alice Band's offer to join her in a small dig-cum-summer school in Brindisi .

This had led to three things: firstly, she discovered an affinity with lower school twelve – sixteen year old pupils who were out on the dig with their archaeology teacher. She didn't mind becoming Alice's unpaid teaching assistant for the four weeks. Nor did she mind acting as teaching assistant to the QAYL girls who were sharing the site and the dig. Even though she sensed reserve between Alice Band, herself an old QAYL pupil, and the teacher leading the QAYL contingent.

More than that, Alice had reminded her that she, Jocasta, was now adult and independent. This had been followed by…. The realisation that everything she had done with Millie in the last couple of years at school could only be described, now, as "practice" for this, her first full blown affair with an impossibly more attractive, more experienced, more sophisticated, older woman… Jocasta was not foolish enough to call it "love", but she was certainly loving it.

And the third thing… the inhumation that Alice was to carry out here, under cover of the school dig.

Jocasta had spent a summer experiencing two of the absolutes of human existence, sexual ecstacy and the passion of death. These are not minor magics. They change people.

* * *

_**(1)**_ With a doubling of student numbers, and a subsequent heavy investment in an ambitious building and refurbishment programme designed to find room for them all, the AG school bought into an enormous contract with a Hublandish firm that manufactured Dwarvish-designed flat-pack furniture, for final assembly by the customer. Ikea Ikeasson's furniture business didn't normally deal in such figures, but met the Assassin school order to the extent that each new girl received four large boxes containing, respectively:-

i)A bedside cabinet;

ii) A study desk/bookshelf;

iii) A wardrobe for those larger items of clothing and equipment;

iv) A bed.

Each box notionally carried a bent metal key designed to tighten up all those fiddly nuts and bolts, together with an assembly instruction sheet printed in the _**Hjübllåndska**_ tongue, combined with Nordic Snow Runes depicting the assembly of the said item of furniture.

The Guild School's curriculum and course syllabus committee convened hastily and decided that this could be a grading exercise all of its own , offering course credits in the following areas:- Woodwork; Imaginative Transcription of Nordic Snow Runes; and the Hjübllåndskan language and literature. _**(2) **_

_**(2)** Happy were our hearts and glad the day / When we went-a-roving to Ikea Ikeasson's flatpack furniture factory and warehouse/ and bought the Jonskippanskan range of study desks…._

And speaking of bedspace, that little and disregarded matter of the girls inheriting what had once been Viper House's first-year dorm. Had Jocasta and Millie known it, the laws of narrative causality had dicated that their respective beds were in **exactly** the same places as those taken by Pteppic and Chidder many, many, years before. And Lucinda Rust, at least in her first term and a half before her unpopularity got her a transfer to Raven House to start afresh, slept in **exactly** the same bedspace formerly occupied by Cheesewright. There had even been an unpleasantness, brought about by Lucinda, concerning a smaller, shyer, and less assertive, girl's desire to say her prayers every night, with Millie taking her side and having to perform many Agatean Burns and other physically painful inducements on Lucinda before she accepted the principle of religious freedom. There may be something in the theory of character osmosis....

_**(3)**_ Alice dropped bronze stars from her rewards scheme, when she realised enterprising pupils awarded bronze were surreptitiously sidling up to the star chart at the front of the class and huffing on their dull bronze stars, then buffing them up, so they were indistinguishable from gold.


	3. The Brindisian Job

Career Guidance 3

The summer dig had gone on for four weeks under near-perfect Brindisian skies and heat. Running costs shared between the Assassins' School and the QAYL, it was a pleasant working holiday for sixty girls from both schools, in the age-range twelve to fifteen. Motivation was high and discipline was minimal, and the only thing the directing teachers needed to be constantly wary of was the magnet a site full of schoolgirls from the Sto Plains presented to local Brindisian boys of the same age.

Officially sharing a twin room at the local _penzione _with Alice Band, Jocasta had never felt happier or more fulfilled. Tanned and lean, performing her share of camp chores such as cooking and digging new privies (a long way from any suspected artefacts and clearly marked afterwards as having been a privy – Alice Band, with her long experience of sites, _insisted _on this). Dressing in shorts as short and tops as skimpy as modesty allowed, Jocasta could see why local males were interested, but good management as well as a sympathetic local _Guardia_ kept them well away. Alice had emphasised to Sergente Duepunti (1) and Caporal Noduli (2) of the Guardia that the dig they were on had the personal interest of His Serene Highness the Doge (she had brandished a wad of official-looking papers with official seals on them) and he would not look favourably on too many sets of feet trampling over the dig.

As His Serene Highness the Doge of Brindisi was known to be a bad-tempered curmudgeonly old beggar who had looked at the idea of the slave-rowed trireme and reputedly asked "Why stop there?"(3), the local Watch had jumped to satisfy orders that seemed to emanate from the Doge's Palace. It was either that, or perform a dereliction of duty that could get you assigned to the fifth deck down, or worse.

Alice, smiling enigmatically, returned the routine Doge's Palace paperwork to its wallet, applauding the Brindisian tendency to put the same ornate scrollwork and enormous wax seal on a mere permit to dig temporary field toilets, emanating from the Sub-bureau for Public Sanitation, as it would on a letter from the Doge himself.

It meant they were less likely to be disturbed concerning the Other Thing.

This had occurred one night when Alice had brought out a bundle of plans, purporting to be a collection of plan views of the site they were currently excavating. Most of them were. But to Jocasta's eye, something was wholly wrong, wholly unrelated, about one of them, although it was drawn in the same style and manner as the rest and would have escaped a cursory eye, or one that did not know how to interpret an archaeological map. She frowned, and asked Alice.

"Because it isn't. " she said. "This place. It's a location about fifteen miles from here. Before we pack up and leave this site I'll be paying a call there. A professional call."

Jocasta looked on in polite incomprehension for a second or two, and then light dawned. She nodded.

"The last thing I want to do is to put any of the students here at risk, which is why I've been at pains to show them an archaeological site and nothing but an archaeological site." she said. "Jocasta, you must have noticed it hasn't just been those rather dense policemen watching the site? They're the window-dressing. We've also had some rather smart people from the Doge's personal secretariat coming along to look at us. Fortunately they've seen nothing more than a hard-working teacher and her graduate assistant enjoying a thinly-concealed summer holiday, and they've gone again."

Jocasta, who had sensed nothing, and seen nobody, let her mind race at the implications of this. Alice smiled.

"So in the last week of the dig, we go and perform the inhumation. Then we return here denying all knowledge, and leave for Ankh-Morpork." She reached across and ran her fingers down Jocasta's bare arms. This provoked a tremble.

"The more I read about this contract and the more I find out, the more I need a second person involved. And I know you well enough to know I'd rather have you with me. Will you help me, Jocasta?"

Alice pushed her tinted glasses back over her forehead, exposing her eyes. She looked directly at Jocasta. Jocasta trembled.

"Alice, you _know_ I would.."

"Good. But don't jump to conclusions, read the contract and the background material."

Alice brought out some summer reading: a bound hardback novel called _The Theta-Upsilon Conspiracy (4) _by Geoffrey Toxologist.

"Light summer reading" she said, dismissively. "Only nobody ever reads them, which includes secret policemen. Look hard at Chapter Eight. It'll fight to try and be something else, by the way. Look at what's _really_ there."

"_This?" breathed Paxton, holding up the slim and deadly killer in his muscled and ripped right hand. Light reflected from the sweat-sheen on his craggy jaw…"_

"Try not to let it send you to sleep, Jocasta. That's how it defends itself. Focus!"

"_It's an AK-47. This gonne is the perfect killing weapon. 38 inches long from stock to muzzle.."_

Jocasta jerked herself away from a page-long, deadly dull, technical description of a science-fiction killing weapon on another planet. She realised with a shock how it had sapped her will to stay awake. She focused. The letters on the page seemed to squirm, grey out, and reform….

_Contract for the inhumation of Don Pietro "Banana-Nose" Maldonado. _

_This contract is to the value of $AM50,000 and subject to Guild Tax at 50%. _

_Interest of closure has been recorded by the Right Honourable Miss Alice Band on date….._

" It's an application of L-Space that we're very interested in." she heard Alice say.

"Camouflage and concealment of the written word. It doesn't class as "magic" in itself, therefore there are no restrictions of charter or potential arguments with the wizards. Impressive, isn't it? Any casual reader will just see the soporific field the contract puts out to protect itself and they'll fall asleep. They'll just blame it on a superbly bad novel!"

With Alice's steadying arms around her, Jocasta read the contract.

"It doesn't say who ordered the contract" she said, at the end.

"They never do" Alice replied. "That's always a secret. There's a code number here on the first page – LTM33523. So I'd guess Lady T'Malia negociated the contract for the Dark Council, and in the Master's office, there's a safe with a list of these numbers together with details of the person originating the contract terms. I'd guess, though, the knight Pietro Maldonado has been alarming the Doge in some subtle ways. He's retreated to his high tower, he's actively recruiting for _condotierri – _mercenary soldiers, that is –and he's manufacturing argument with a neighbour. In Brindisi, that's usually a precursor to a short war, the kind where Maldonado kills his neighbour and assimilates his peasant tenants and villages. If the neighbour also has friends, this can blow up into a full-scale nasty civil war of the good old kind. Nobody wants to let that happen, not with the clacks and the coach routes coming this way. So the person paying for this might be one of those neighbours. It might be a local affiliate of the clacks company who wants the message to go out that men with suits, not swords, decide the future of the world these days. It might be the Doge, who doesn't want a bloody civil war. It might even be Vetinari, who comes from round here, according to legend. But that's not our problem."

Alice moved her exploring fingertips upwards, and nuzzled and kissed Jocasta's neck.

"_We_ go out there and prevent thousands dying in a war and a whole country being laid waste. By killing one man at the right time. And I know he's driven one wife to suicide. Not a nice man at all."

Alice and Jocasta shared a long lingering kiss.

"Ethical Assassination. When four of us graduated, we agreed that if we ever killed again, we'd pick clients who would make the world cleaner by their going, or prevent thousands more dying in a war or whatever. It's what I've been trying to teach you for seven years. Are you up for it?"

"Oh, ye Gods, yes!" moaned Jocasta. Some time later, they set about planning the inhumation of Signor Don Pietro "Banana-Nose" Maldonado_(6)_, bully, thief, extortionist, a man with a dangerous attitude towards the office of Doge and a negligient attitude to the needs of his wives.

* * *

**(1) ****Duepunti (Italian) **- doubled-full stop, or colon.

**(2) Nodule (Italian) – **unsightly growth or protuberance, or perhaps a Nobb.

**(3)** Brindisi's fabulous maritime wealth had been built on large ships such as** the Quadréme **and the** Quinquéreme. **Alas, the** Hexéreme **and the** Septéreme **faced the law of diminishing returns: the **Hexéreme **capsized in Brindisi harbour under its sheer weight of rowing decks, with the unfortunates on the sixth deck (those who had _really_ upset the serenity of the Doge) so deep down in the bowels of the ship that they had largely suffocated anyway. Thus, the **Septéreme **has so far never left the drawing board. The Doge clamours for it, but this is like Adolf Hitler demanding bigger and bigger panzers. The designers have to tread a fine line between uselessly wasting resources and upsetting an absolute dictator, so work on the seven-deck rowing galleon proceeds, (but infinitesimally slowly), with the odd model presented at the Palace to prove we haven't forgotten, Doge Mio.

**(4) **In Ankh-Morpork where Alice had bought it, it had begun as _Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, _in which a repressed lady greengrocer brought up by a _really_ odd and excl'usive religiou's s'ect discovers pa'ssion in the arm's of an unconventional rebel, a mys'tery woman who introduces her to the delights of lemons, limes, grapefruit and other citric practice's, which her religion denounces' as blas'phempou's , S'atanic and utterly evil. As we know, it is a law of Nature that all books bought to be read on holiday transmute into pulp novels with at least two Ephebian letters in their title. They will remain unread, even by Brindisian secret policemen perfoming a discreet search of your room while you are on site. _**(5)**_

This is a Good Thing, as they will totally miss the Assassins' Guild contract sewn into the book by Guild librarian Miss Hanna Beforegod, a woman who was moved to inhumation by borrowers who think their pencilled marginal comments are words of blazing truth that subsequent borrowers will actually want to read. As opposed to being, say, a disfigurement of a library book _which was not yours to disfigure, and even if I owned it myself I'd jolly well think twice before scribbling in it! _Other inhumation offences, carried out in a quiet little branch of the Pseudopolis Public Libraries System, included substantial late return after the final agreed due date; employing bacon rashers or hand-rolled cigarettes as bookmarks; snipping out those lovely colour illustrations to add to your scrapbook on Agatean Samurai ; and being too loud in the Reference Area. The Assassins' Guild naturally took an interest in a gifted inhumationist who could bring about spectacular results with nothing more than a date-stamp and ink-pad, and after a Mature Students' Course, she now manages the Dark Library (Lending and School Loans) section as a fully trained Assassin Librarian. Be warned: she also takes ethical contracts.

**(6)** Yes. The _Maldonado _family are characters in Shea and Wilson's _**Illuminatus!**_ series of books, as are the related _Malatestas._


	4. Highrisk professions

_**Career Guidance 4**_

Liona Keeble looked at the Assassin sitting opposite him with a look of respect on his face.

"So there's a lot more to killing somebody than just walking up to them and…"

"_Inhuming_, please" Jocasta corrected him. "Or _annulling_. Or _deleting_. I've heard people with specialist skills talk about _sterilizing_ or _deadheading_ or _balancing the ledger_, but the point is, nobody in the Guild ever talks about _killing_. That's how we'd think about a totally amateur inhumation, the sort of thing the Watch deal with, without any style or flair."

Keeble nodded. In a strange way he was enjoying this interview: it was more thrilling and immediate than a covert read of the _**Tanty Bugle**_.

"You made absolutely sure the students on a summer camp could not be implicated in any way. You made sure the local police searched for any sign a Licenced Assassin might not just be there as a legitimate archaeologist. You made sure they saw what you wanted them to see and reported back accordingly, ie that she genuinely is there as an archaeologist and her intentions are peaceable.

"Either you or Miss Band would accompany the supply cart to the nearest town twice a week. It would take a route passing close by the warlord's tower and castle, where you would water the horses at a nearby river and see to their needs. At the same time you made observations, and built up a picture of life at the Torre Maldonado. Later on, you supplemented this with covert observation at night. You made a plan. Finally, Miss Band went out covertly by night to retrieve certain specialised weapons and equipment from where she'd cached them, some weeks previously. Had she taken them to the camp or the guesthouse with her, she would have been implicated, as these are the kind of weapons you very unambiguously use for one purpose and one purpose only. Finally, with three days of the dig to go, the two of you rode out and made the final approach to, er, the client."

"Very well phrased, Mr Keeble. And believe me, there's something about planning an inhumation that takes you over. It's exciting, it's absorbing, you realise this is not a school exercise or an exam, it is for real, it is the very thing you have trained for for seven years, and anything else you have done is purely incidental to this moment."

Jocasta's eyes shone bright with excitement.

"That's _assassination_, Mr Keeble. It gets into your blood!"

* * *

Alice Band had a theory. Well, maybe not even that, perhaps only half an idea. But sometimes in her well-ordered archaeologist's mind, among all the graded trowels and brushes, she'd suspect that sooner or later, all the known archaeological sites might well be played out and future generations of archaeology students would have nothing to do but endlessly reopen and fill old sites.

"So… this is one of the things you mean by Stealth Archaeology, Alice?" Jocasta had asked, as they ate a spare antipasto meal together on the evening of The Job, letting themselves be highly visible in the village in brightly coloured feminine clothing.

"Well, the way I see it, in a thousand years time, anyone finding the grave of a minor Brindisian lord is going to have an interesting dig." she said, reaching for the stuffed olives. She lowered her voice. "Somebody has got to make sure the archaeologists of the future have got a job to do and sites to dig. Making sure there's a filled grave today is a positive service to archaeology in a thousand years. Pre-archaeology, if you like. Stealth Archaeology because we're taking every precaution to see we get in and out alive!"

Jocasta had laughed. They even made sure to be seen drinking a modest glass of wine each, then riding off ostentatiously in the direction of the _**penzione.**_ The crazy strange Morporkian women, no doubt, the ones who were suspected of being _embankments_ and _holders-back of water_, but it takes all sorts to make a world….off for an early night's, er, sleep, _senza dubbio. _

_But in the cover of a forest clearing, the two women stripped off their street clothes and donned Assassin-black. Alice Band dug into a layer of forest-floor debris and cleared it aside, revealing two oiled leather sacks of additional equipment. She and Jocasta took time and selected what they thought they needed, re-burying the rest, along with their original more feminine clothing, for collection later. Loading their horses, they set off into the night at a slow unhurried canter, the work of disinformation done. When the Torre Maldonado was within a mile away, they stopped and tethered the horses in a depression between two hills, selecting equipment and making their way at a fast jog to the Torre's outer wall. They returned fifty-five minutes later, pursued by angry men-at-arms on foot, as fires erupted in the upper floors of the tower. A volley of blowdarts dropped the pursuers, and two black-clad figures on horseback rode out into the moonless Brindisian countryside. _

* * *

"Alice said the first thing a _capo di condottieri_, a Brindisian warlord, does when he makes a reputation for himself is to build a tower and move his family to the upper floors. They're like old-time wizards in that respect."

"So you climbed the outer wall of the tower…"

"Free-climbing, Mr Keeble. No ropes, just trusting your experience, and climbing at speed."

"You didn't think of going in at the bottom and working up?"

"And fighting our way upstairs through nine or ten floors of guards and soldiers? No. And besides, you only kill the guards if it's an _inhumation with extreme prejudice. _Otherwise, it's thought of as bad manners. Alice thought we'd exploit the client being on an upper floor by climbing to the roof and going in through the ceiling. And she knows I can edificeer, she taught me!"

Jocasta smiled at the memory.

"A hundred and fifty feet in twelve minutes. There were guards on the top walk of the tower, but drugged darts took them down. Then all we had to do was to climb down a floor, inside the tower, and there he was. Oh, he tried to fight, whatever else he was he was no coward, but Alice is good with her sword. My job was to keep anyone else away while she concluded the inhumation, and take an iconograph for the claim, to prove he was dead.

"While I was doing that, a servant screamed and ran and raised the alarm. I barricaded the only door into the man's apartment and tried to make life difficult for the guardsmen trying to batter a way in – you know, stabbing at any fingers I could see, when a hammer opened another panel in the door, shooting a crossbow through the hole, sort of thing, all of this while Alice was writing the Guild receipt to leave by the body."

Keeble nodded.

"Then it was out of the window on a rope and abseiling down as quickly as we could. Alice passed a couple of open windows on the way down and lobbed a firebomb through each one, just to confuse things and give them something else to think about. Then a run back to the horses with some pursuit, and home!"

Jocasta realised she was sitting on the edge of her seat and beginning to bounce up and down with excitement. She remembered getting back to the _**penzione**_ with Alice, and their subsequent lovemaking had been really _intense. _As if having nearly been killed had given it special power and force. Not that this aspect was for sharing with Keeble, of course…

"And afterwards?"

"We closed down the site over the next couple of days and packed everything up for leaving. The coaches we'd booked arrived to take the pupils away, back to Quirm and Ankh-Morpork. Oh, of course the police arrived to ask questions. Not nice dopey old Duepunti or his _amico_ , Noduli. _This_ time it was the clever ones from Brindisi city. Now Brindisi respects the Concordat and they'd have had to let us go in the end, but the worry was that they might not try for a formal arrest. These looked like Dark Clerks, and the Doge is pretty temperamental as a head of government."

"But you both got away".

"Alice played the card of being there as a Guild of Archaeologists member first and a teacher second. She got slightly indignant and pointed out that even an Assassin can have a summer working holiday like other people, and anyway she'd left all that sort of working gear somewhere else!"

"And you?"

"I suggested it must have been somebody else from the Guild. I pointed out to them that twice the usual number of Assassins graduated that summer and that meant a whole lot of new people hungry to make a living and establish a reputation for themselves."

"To which the policeman said?"

Jocasta grimaced.

"Yes. We heard for the first time a class of female assassins graduated. Girls such as _you_, miss Wiggs!"

"Ah, Tricky."

"Alice intervened. She pointed out that if there are twice the number of graduate Assassins and only the same number of contracts being taken out, if somebody in your police beat has a contract against them, they will be visited sooner rather than later, do you not think?"

"And you were allowed to go?"

"They could find no evidence to make stick. There's not much more to say, really. We shook off the agent detailed to trail us, retrieved our equipment from the cache, rode on, and rejoined our coaches outside Brindisian territory. We came back to Filigree Street and wrote mission reports, and filled in the claim forms. Alice said, keep calm, Contracts Payments is a hideous bureaucracy that wants everything in triplicate, it's slow, it's cumbersome, but you get the money eventually.

"We split it as agreed, $AM6,250 to me, $AM18,750 to Alice, and I banked my quarter-share. Then it was new school term again, and I had to accept that I wasn't at school any more and I was effectively unemployed and living with my family in Moon Pond Lane."

_And Alice was a lovely, beautiful, summer romance, but it had to end. She couldn't be seen bedding a recent ex-pupil back in Ankh-Morpork, although she promised me she'd love to see me again, when it's safe and discreet for her too. She reminded me my father's a Licenced Assassin who might not be too happy, for one thing. It hurt more to realise I'd left school and that half of my life is over. _

"To be honest, it hurt more to realise I'd left school and that half of my life is over." Jocasta said, half to herself.

"Hurt more than what?" asked Keeble. Jocasta realised she was talking to herself, and reminded herself there were things which were not strictly relevant to work that the job broker had no need to know. She thought quickly.

"The anticlimax, the come-down, the afterwards, from planning and executing an inhumation" Jocasta said. "I've only taken drugs experimentally1 _**(1) **_but the feeling is _exactly_ the same!"

"I think I begin to see." Keeble said, slowly.

"You are in an occupation where the risks are high, but the renumeration is more than substantial. A girl of nineteen living at home with her parents might normally hope or aspire to a pay of no less, perhaps, than seventy-five pennies a day. That's three dollars seventy-five pence a week. Even then, she'd be under compulsion to pay some of that over to her parents if she wants to carry on living at home. It would be very rare of that girl to take home five dollars a week in pay."

"Unless she's an Assassin"

"Or a Seamstress. And I have an agreement with Rosie Palm that if any girls come to me showing that sort of career aptitude, I send them along to Sheer Street with an introduction card and the Guild pays me a finders' fee for my time. But, no offence, I don't see…"

"None taken" Jocasta assured him, grinning.

"But I do see the problem. Your trade is one where you don't need to perform an, ah, inhumation, all that often to secure a reasonable standard of living."

He scribbled figures on a pad.

"For ease of the maths, take a skilled shop retail girl on five dollars a week. You've just received a lump sum, already taxed, of over six thousand dollars. Therefore you can live, at the same standard as that shop girl, for twenty-three years. Given that you _will _want a higher standard of living than that, let's call it a twenty dollar a week income, you have enough in the bank for six and a half years. And that's even without allowing for compound interest. And by the way, twenty dollars a week is the same income as the Postmaster General or the Master of the Royal Mint! And a lot more than the Commander of the Watch, not of course that Vimes cares about the official salary._**(2)**_"

Keeble shook his head.

"So the period between inhumations is necessarily a long one for the Assassin. Time to think, time to be idle, time to worry as to the point and the purpose of life. And all the time, craving the risk and the thrill of the chase, the planning, the preparation, the execution of the contract."

Keeble raised an eyebrow at her.

Jocasta lowered her head, meekly.

"You're absolutely right."

Keeble nodded.

"So what we need for you, my dear, is work that has the same degree of risk-taking as the profession of Assassination. The same thrill, the same buzz, the same charge, the same risk of physical damage, even death, if you get over-confident and turn your back on it for an instant.

"But spread out over 24/8, so that the free time for fret and worry is limited. The pay is a sinecure, as you are also banking contract fees from occasional Assassin contracts.

"Let me see…. Hmmm, deep-sea octagen mining. You don't have qualifications in mechanical engineering and applied thaumaturgy, do you? No, thought not.

"Escort needed for University thaumaturgy party out to explore the deep jungles for arcane and dangerous research materials….might suit graduate Assassin, apply at Unseen University, see Professor P. Stibbons. No?"

"Jungles make me itch." Jocasta said, with deep sincerity. Just hearing Johanna Smith-Rhodes rhapsodise about the Howondalandian jungle of her childhood had been enough.

"Fair enough" said Keeble, shuffling another card.

"Ooh… this could be just what we're looking for! And you're experienced! Classroom Assistants needed. You will assist a qualified and experienced Teacher and work at his/her direction and assist with the preparation and delivery of lessons and the smooth running of the class. Pay is competitive, accommodation may be arranged if needed, with the possibility of training up to Teacher insurance and death-in-service benefits may be payable to next-of-kin.

"It's the Guild of Teachers on Filigree Street. Just next to the Assassin's Guild, isn't it? Teachers and classroom assistants needed now at the following locations:

City: The Charity School of Seven –Handed Sek

The Frout Academy

The Assassins' Guild School, Filigree Street….

Wouldn't go there if I was you, luvvie!"

"Ye gods, no! I've heard new teachers get eaten alive at the Frout Academy! Everyone's heard horror stories!"

"Country: The Quirm Academy for Young Ladies

Thrasher's School., Pseudopolis

Hugglestone's Academy…

"Oh. Those last two were men-only."

"Tell me more about the Assassins' School needing teaching assistants" Jocasta said, slowly.

"well, they did say they have trouble attracting teachers, especially women" Keeble said. "So they'd be interested. Only they might insist you spend time away from the school first, having so recently left it. Have a life somewhere else, then bring it back to them. There's always QAYL, though. Didn't you share that archaeology thing with their pupils?"

Jocasta Wiggs remembered. She'd liked teaching. It was worth a try.

"I think you might have found me something, Mr Keeble." She said, gratefully.

He smiled. When you've resettled Death as a short-order cook, existential Assassins are nothing.

* * *

_**(1) **_Mr Mericet insists on this as a lower sixth-form module. Under medical supervision, the student Assassin is taught to synthesise certain stimulant drugs which, used as an absolutely last resort, can drag the very last reserves of strength, alertness, courage, and reasoning ability, from an otherwise exhausted or failing body. They are warned that this is the one and only time use of these drugs will be sanctioned except under live, extreme, conditions, and are then allowed a chance to see _exactly _what these medical preparations do for and to the body. Jocasta loved three days straight of feeling wide awake and capable of anything. She consequently hated the crash afterwards as she came right down, all at once. As can be seen, the Assassins' School's anti-drugs programme has a certain cruel efficiency about it – _build up the high, but leave 'em to discover the low and the bad trip for themselves. _

_**(2) **_He doesn't. Vimes pays the entirety of his official salary over to the Widows and Orphans' Fund, every month.


	5. Highest Risk Profession

_**Career Guidance 5**_

Liona Keeble nodded, sympathetically.

"You got home, you claimed and banked the fee, you are now able to live in some comfort, which would not in normal circumstances be accessible to a girl your age, and now you're missing the thrill of a dangerous game. It must have been strange to go back to the Guild not as a school-pupil but as an Assassin?"

"It was." agreed Jocasta.

At the end of the long, arduous, journey back from Brindisi, which by the fastest coaches and best roads had taken ten days, they had returned to the Guild just as a new school year was beginning and the first bewildered, confused and homesick eleven year olds were arriving from the furthest points, usually Genua, Fourecks, the Foggy Islands, and Howondaland.

"A trickle now, but it'll be a torrent tomorrow" Alice observed, in between kindly asking a new pupil for his documents, glancing them over, and saying "Pernyporax  
House. You go that way and up the stairs. Report at Baron Stone's office. Then he'll send you on. Don't look so miserable. You're one of the first to arrive, so you'll get privileges like picking your own bed in the dorm."

Alice had raised her voice and called, in that penetrating but not-shouty teacher's voice, "Is there anybody here who is for Tump House?" and acquired two hesitantly raised hands. Jocasta smiled with friendly sympathy at two worried young faces.

"Follow me" she said, briskly. "Pick up your cases and don't dawdle!"

"You know" she said to Jocasta, "this is one of those areas where I'd welcome a classroom assistant. Somebody who could do the paperwork of booking 'em in and showing 'em to the dorm. So they don't have to wait in the yard for somebody to notice them. Then I get to see them when they're all assembled and it frees up my time."

Later on, Alice had gently restrained Jocasta from going into the building through a pupils' door, as she had for the past seven years. .

"Jocasta, you're not restricted by school rules any more. You are one of us now. A full Assassin. You may enter by the main Guild doors. You may now ascend the main stairs to the Master's Office uninvited. As it happens we have business up there with the Claims Office. Let's go and write our claims up."

A few minutes later, the Inhumation Bell rung, once. The pupils waiting in the courtyard, sitting forlornly on their bags and cases, looked up, as did Johanna Smith-Rhodes, who had come down to collect any arrivals from Howondaland or new pupils for Raven House. Even inside the Claims Office, several floors up in the main building, Alice and Jocasta still heard Johanna's ringing voice as she put a pupil right.

"Your name, please. Thenk you. Jesper Cockeyne-Grent, of Viper House. You ere fortunate thet your house mester Mr Mericet wes not here to listen to thet piece of ignorance. Mr Cockeyne-Grent, thet is _not_ a "bleddy clock", es you celled it, end it is _not _running twenty minutes slow! Be essured thet it tolls the hours, but feshionably late. Thet is the Inhumation Bell of the Guild. It is rung when a full and qualified Essessin, es you _hope_ you will be one day, completes a contrect! Even now there is a Licenced Essessin up in the Claims Office staking her – or perhaps even _his_ - claim to the completion of a contrect. Normelly the Mester of the Guild will announce who, later in the dey. But es for _you_, mr Cockeyne-Grent. You will complete an essay on the Inhumation Bell, on its history, on how many times it hes rung since installation, of no less than a thousand words, so that you do not forget again. Bring it to me et my office in Raven House by Friday. Thet is ell. I will later go to the steffroom end edvise Mr Mericet ebout you. For now, you may sit in the cold and contemplate the Guild. Which, _you hope_, you will greduate from in seven years time! "

"Yes, madam" was the almost unheard reply.

"And I em nobody's _medem_! " Johanna snapped back. "My _friends_ cell me Johanna. You _pupils_ will cell me Miss Smith-Rhodes, or just "Miss". End for slow learners I always hev a roster for cleaning those _difficult_ cages et the Enimel Menegement Unit! _Really_ slow learners I send to the new Zoo, where there are now _elephants_!"

"Johanna." Alice said, giggling a little. "You have to love her."

Lord Downey was one of the first to find out. He congratulated Jocasta warmly on her achievement.

"Unfortunately you weren't the first of the new Assassins to chalk up an inhumation" he said. "Donna la Diabola beat you to it by a fortnight. So she officially holds the record for the first inhumation by a female graduate. You weren't far behind, though!"

Downey's eyes misted over somewhat.

"I know your father will be very proud of you." he said. "The continuation of a great family tradition, and all that. But with Miss Band working so closely with you, I had no doubts at all. None whatsoever."

After a few more handshakes and congratulations, Johanna took her bags and bundles and went home. Her father received her in his study, a look of appraising wonderment in his eyes.

"Downey sent me a clacks" he said, limping over to the drinks cupboard. It wasn't a great limp: but the leg Vimes had broken for him would never be the same again.

_Well, I was going for the big one at the time, _he'd said from his bed at the Royal Sybil. _For five million, can't complain if the man out-thinks you and breaks your leg for you, but leaves you alive. It was worth a go anyway, and he's got nothing to fear from me. Best chap won in a fair fight. Damn, must e getting old! _

"Damn, so many things I don't know, even about my own daughter." He mused. "I ought to know what you prefer to drink, Jocasta".

"Pink gin, please, daddy" she requested.

He obliged, pouring a large port for himself, and they clinked glasses. His eyes looked her over, speculatively.

"I hear. This summer in Brindisi. You did it." He said, awkwardly.

Jocasta kept her face passive, not knowing which _it_ he meant. Some _its_ are tricky with fathers. And in Brindisi she'd done both _it_s. Both times with Miss Band.

His eyes mingled appreciation and regret. _Damn, what do you say to a suddenly adult daughter? They grow up so fast. _

"Where do the years go?" he said, rhetorically. "Last time I looked you were this high, in New Plonk's uniform. Now your licence is up on the wall with mine and your brothers', and you've chalked up your first. Downey was delighted! "

He smiled, happy.

"Your brother's checking out a contract in Hergen, if you're interested. I know you scored high in wilderness survival and you'll – he'll - bloody well need it out there!"

Despite herself, Jocasta was interested. "I'll talk to him, daddy. You're saying he'll be useless in the big outdoors and needs a guide?"

"Won't be for a month or two yet. If you'll take my advice, try to find something that gets you out and about and stops you moping round the house."

"Already got it, Daddy. I'm going to see Mr Keeble the employment consultant and see what sort of interesting part-time jobs he's got."

Her father nodded.

"Make sure it suits yer social status, though. No slumming it!"

She assured him, and left the room.

"_And no joining the damn' Watch, either! I know Vimes has a soft spot for you!"_

She laughed quietly. Some things would never change.

An informal interview committee composed of Baron Stone, Lady T'Malia and Mr Nivor smiled at Jocasta from the other side of the table. Lady T'Malia spoke for all three.

"Normally, Jocasta, we'd insist on a recent graduate of the School, such as yourself, going out into the world for a few years and doing something different before applying to us to become a classroom assistant.

"But with your having been part of a team that planned and brought about an inhumation, and with your aptitude for fieldcraft and wilderness survival, we can see a position for you immediately.

"In order for every pupil here to go on the wilderness survival courses, we have to run some classes into school holidays or go out with over-large classes, as we have a shortage of suitably qualified teachers. All our teaching staff who can lead outdoor skills classes also have classroom and research commitments in the Guild, and some are also House teachers whose absence needs to be covered. So the more classroom assistants we can recruit who can lead and teach wilderness survival, the better. Rather than four teachers, I envisage sending out two plus up to three skilled assistants who have no other dedicated duties In between courses you would be given such classroom duties as we think fit, and of course formal and informal training would be available if you think teaching is your career. Pay, unfortunately, is a sinecure, pressure on budgets, dollar a day, et cetera, but I somehow think a graduate Assassin can manage, if she gets time off for the occasional contract. That is understood."

Lady T'Malia, the School's de facto Headmistress, smiled and her rings tinkled against each other. Corsetry creaked as she passed the contract over.

"Just sign here, my dear. Good. And welcome to the School!"

Liona Keeble squeaked with excitement at the box of Weinrich and Boetcher chocolates that was delivered to his office. The card accompanying them read

_Thank you for your help and advice. Jocasta Wiggs. _


End file.
